Star radio storyteller David Sedaris presents his collected works in one audio box set. The longest (at five hours) is his latest,
Me Talk Pretty One Day, which contains two live performances from San Francisco. Welcome to a world where dogs outrank children, guitars have breasts, and Sedaris's fellow language-class students try to convey the concept of Easter to a Moroccan Muslim in their fledgling French (translated into English): "It is a party for the little boy of God," says one. "Then he be die one day on two ... morsels of ... lumber," says another. Sedaris is hilarious, and his Billie Holiday impression is amazing.
The three-hour, Christmas-themed Holidays on Ice is the gem of the collection. It has his greatest hit, "SantaLand Diaries," a chronicle of his stint as an elf at Macy's, covering everything from the preliminary group lectures ("You are not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf.") to the perils of inter-elf flirtation. Other hits feature the crazed newsletter "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" and the prostitute coworker his sister brought home one Yuletide, giving "the phrase 'ho, ho, ho' whole different meaning." Barrel Fever contains the fulminatingly funny "Glen's Homophobia Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 2" and "Parade," discussing the narrator's perhaps not fully plausible gay relationships with Bruce Springsteen, Mike Tyson, and Peter Jennings. Naked describes his adventures in a nudist colony, but his family tales are, as ever, nonpareil.
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